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Tuesday, September 16, 2014

How or why Joan Rivers (or anyone within earshot) figured her voice suddenly needed fixing, I couldn’t tell you. Since she wasn’t beautiful, Rivers’ voice was usually described as “raspy” or “grating.” Had she looked like Kathleen Turner and sounded exactly the same, the word would’ve been “husky” instead.

To state that Joan Rivers’ life would’ve been completely different if she’d been better looking is to say nothing—“If we had ham, we could make a ham and cheese sandwich if we had cheese”—and, yet, everything.

Beauty is the female’s primary reserve currency. Some women inherit a pulchritude trust fund; others, like Joan Rivers, are the ones we hear about in stump speeches, those born already owing some five-figure debt to someone or other.

What *is* it with women vis-à-vis other women?! [edit] Also, what *is* is with women that everything they don't like -- even when it's typically done by women, rather than by men -- is always due to the alleged "sexism" of men or of "society" (which is generally used as just another way of blaming men)?

Joan Rivers was a very beautiful woman -- I speak as a man who holds to an all-but-impossible ideal of female beauty (*) -- *until* she turned herself into a freak with plastic surgery. Also, her voice was indeed “raspy” and “grating", and would have been called so even had she looked like the young Liz Taylor.

(*) Some of my cousins are so beautiful that first meeting them can literally take your breath away. And that's just the men. My siblings and I are the "plain" ones of that side of my family (and I'm the "plain" one of the four of us). I know it's not reality, but my setting for "normally attractive woman" is turned up several notches past "5".

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Although it is not unheard of to have part of your brain missing, either congenitally or from surgery, the woman joins an elite club of just nine people who are known to have lived without their entire cerebellum. A detailed description of how the disorder affects a living adult is almost non-existent, say doctors from the Chinese hospital, because most people with the condition die at a young age and the problem is only discovered on autopsy (Brain, doi.org/vh7).

However, in this woman, the missing cerebellum resulted in only mild to moderate motor deficiency, and mild speech problems such as slightly slurred pronunciation. Her doctors describe these effects as “less than would be expected”, and say her case highlights the remarkable plasticity of the brain.

Such cases not only "highlight the remarkable plasticity of the brain" but *also* highlight the falseness of the atheistic/naturalistic claim that minds are explained by brains (as see here and here)

Dean Burnett: -- "Remember, these [new myths about the human brain] were all written by an actual neuroscientist and they’re in the Guardian, so they must be true, right?"

The Nimoy Nucleus

It is widely accepted that different areas of the brain are responsible for different functions. There are the regions like Broca’s area that are responsible for language, the amygdala for processing emotional memories, the olfactory bulb for processing smells, and the Shatner’s Bassoon which handles time perception.

But scientists have recently identified an area termed the Nimoy Nucleus, which controls the elevation of individual eyebrows. Individuals with a small Nimoy Nucelus struggle to raise individual eyebrows, whereas those with larger, more developed areas are adept at the singe-eyebrow raise. fMRI scans have also revealed that the Nimoy Nucleus shows increased activity in response to hearing the word “fascinating”.

Understanding while you sleep

It is believed by many that you can learn by listening to things in your sleep. Sadly, this is not true. The reason it’s not true is because the sleeping brain doesn’t communicate the way the conscious brain does. We’re not exactly sure what the sleeping brain is doing, but it seems to be processing information, consolidating memories and the like. It also transmits and receives information from brains in a similar state, to confirm or back-up information. This is what human snoring is; the sleeping brain transmitting data, like that noise you used to get from dial-up modems. That’s why someone’s snoring will keep you awake when you share a bed with them; your brains aren’t synched yet. After a while, you can sleep through it.

I can raise just my left eyebrow without even thinking about it (it has happened all on its own, to the surprise and delight of those around me). But trying to raise only my right eyebrow takes a lot of concentration, and then doesn't really work properly.